The life and times of a motoring and motor rallying journalist in Scotland

Sunday, 13 September 2015

Rally - Podium for Kris

At the end of Day 2, Kris Meeke and Paul
Nagle were holding second place in the Coates Hire Rally Australia, just
0.3 seconds behind Sébastien Ogier. With 5 stages to go on the final
day, any one of the top six were in with a chance of victory. For sure,
the Volkswagen squad were as strong as ever, but the Citroens, Hyundais
and Fords were pushing them harder than they've been pushed elsewhere
this year.

In fact, just 9.1 seconds covered the top four as
they started the final Leg. The running order was changed again, and
although Kris continued to set a strong pace from the opening
kilometres, he was unable to hold off Jari-Matti Latvala. However there
was some satisfaction to be had as he managed to hold off Andreas
Mikkelsen to finish third. After just missing out on a podium at Rally
Australia in 2014, Kris made sure of a top-three result this year.

After his setback on Day 1, Stéphane Lefebvre was quicker on the second
run over the stages and finished thirteenth overall, claiming one
manufacturers’ championship point in the process.

The Citroën
Total Abu Dhabi World Rally Team now heads back to Europe for the
eleventh round of the season. In France, the DS 3 WRCs are set to
contest the Tour de Corse for the first time. The last four occasions
the rally featured in the WRC, between 2005 and 2008, it was won by
Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena in the Citroën Xsara WRC and Citroën C4
WRC.

Afterwards, Kris said: “We achieved the first target which
was to make it to the finish and be consistent. I would point out that
we led the rally for almost two days. I think we did a very good job and
we couldn’t really have expected to do much more on the final leg. We
have to keep working hard.”

Marek Nawarecki (Deputy Team
Principal) commented: “We knew that Kris could be very competitive in
Australia. He got the best out of the car, the conditions and his
strategy. He was able to grab the lead in the early stages of the rally
and defended his podium spot right to the end. Obviously, we’re sorry
that Mads was injured during recce. We hope he will recover quickly, in
time to take part in pre-event testing for the Tour de Corse.”